Mount Florida

Full Discography

LPs

Arrived Phoenix - ole-401 - 2001-01-30

Strut - - 2000-08-28

Storm - - 2000-04-03

Stealth - - 1999-11-15

Biography

Arrived Phoenix January 30, 2001

“From the swirling electronic tones and blunted galactic beats of the opening sequence to the sheet metal stridencies of ‘Postal’ and the dense fuzztones of ‘Bombast,’ Mount Florida make like Killing Joke conspiring with Alex Paterson to play tricks on those with chemically impaired memories.” — Ken Hollings, The Wire

Mount Florida are the Glasgow duo of M.P. Lancaster and Twitch. Together four years, they released a couple of limited singles before hooking up with Matador for three UK-only EPs released over the last year.

Both of them have long and varied backgrounds in music. M.P. has been working with electronics for longer than he would care to remember. Almost signed by ZTT back in the day, he narrowly escaped the ignominy of having to live with a dubious collection of electro pop star press shots. Instead he ventured down a more left-field road, recording music for various installations before releasing a solo album on Twitch’s defunct label Pi recordings — which is how they met. Most recently he has composed the soundtrack to “109,” an audiovisual representation of the table of the elements currently touring Bristol and London.

Twitch has been a DJ for longer than he too would care to remember, spreading his musical gospel around the world. Co-founder of the legendary Edinburgh club Pure, he claims credit/apologizes for bringing techno to Scotland in the late 80’s. Pure has just ended after its tenth birthday and these days Twitch is active in club and concert promotion as well as the upcoming launch of a new label O.S.C.A.R.R. His cardinal club night is the Sunday night Glasgow firebrand Optimo — currently the most celebrated, technologically advanced, and outrageous club in the city — where his radically diverse tastes can finally find an outlet as well as a fanatical following. Optimo recently hosted Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry to a sellout audience of 2000 people; Mount Florida opened the show in what was their first ever live performance. Mount Florida do not have an agenda, they just like to do things differently.

For Arrived Phoenix, Mount Florida used a multitude of source material, ranging from traditional rock instrumentation to their own field recordings to DAT tapes provided by local musicians (which were then manipulated and fed into their machines) to the odd contributor invited to play live in the studio.

Arrived Phoenix moves still further from the three Matador UK EP’s (themselves radically different from one another) and is no more a “DJ album” than records by Coil, KLF, Cabaret Voltaire, or Muslimgauze.

The end result is a one-hour travelogue that defies easy categorization. From slo-mo experimentalist pop and edgy dub landscapes through psych-out percussive lyricism to deep transcendental pastoralism. Somehow this all comes together as the coherent joy that is Arrived Phoenix.

StealthNovember 15, 1999

StormApril 3, 2000

StrutAugust 28, 2000

Band biographies have got to be one of the world’s most boring things to read. Usually banished to the dreaded press kit and foisted upon uninterested journalists, these days they turn up in more exciting places like the Internet. However, once again, they remain boring. This one is no different.

Mount Florida: formed back in about 1996 in... Mount Florida, Glasgow, Scotland. so... there is one of the most exciting part of the biogs already dispelled with: where did they get their name?

Mount Florida are the duo of MP Lancaster and Twitch (Mike and Keith to their mates). They met when Twitch was running his (along with his mates) now legendary ambient club Sonora. MP was this local electronic musician - notably working for various arts / installation projects. Through mutual friends, MP played at Sonora, and Twitch was pretty impressed. So much that he decided to release an LP on Twitch’s own pi recordings. This was “Stag Pie.” And it stagnated.

Now Twitch was primarily known at this point as a dance DJ from the still legendary (9 years strong and still going on) Pure in Edinburgh. His interest in experimental and ambient music was equally as important, and his pi label reflected his interest in all electronica. His belief in MP’s ability continued. he had released Finnish Sahko recordings artist 0 (Mika Vainio, one half of Mute Records’ artist Pan Sonic), and when the Sahko boys came over to Scotland to play at Sonora, MP recorded with them. The result was the “Moor” EP on UPO, the short-lived collaborative label between Sahko and Dum Records in Finland.

Twitch’s constant effort to involve MP with other musicians continued. He played with the now-deceased Muslimgauze in Edinburgh. MP also worked with other “dance” scene DJ’s and clubs like the short-lived Clockwork at the Arches in Glasgow. But still... no “music scene” success. And Twitch continued to work as a successful DJ at Pure and guesting at clubs around the world, but languishing in the world of “clubs.”

So when Twitch wanted to start producing music himself, his natural choice was to work with MP. And Mount Florida was born. Strangely enough, the music they produced together was neither dance-orientated nor soundtrackish. To describe their music... well, music is for the listening, not the describing. And as for their influences... well, they are a bit too varied to give you any real insight into their sound. But it seems to be good enough to have captured the imagination of Matador Records. So that should be good enough for you to go and buy it.

At present, Twitch continues to DJ at Pure and his own club Optimo (Espacio) in Glasgow. He has a strong commitment to using technology in his DJing often incorporating his pal “Roland” for a live mix - using samples, his own drum programming and bleeps for a unique mix. He also is part of the recording act Vodershow.

MP Lancaster continues to make his own music too. He is currently working on a multi-speaker composition for a full-size exhibition in Glasgow (date yet to be finalised). He has worked with NYA, Robin Blackledge, Lindsay Johns, R. Heeps and supplied 4 soundtracks for Bryce landscape animations. And he has 5 cd’s worth of music available through mail order.

A Mount Florida live act with a full band of musicians will be appearing before long.

Are you still awake?

(You were warned).

jk mingo, june 1999

Pre-blog News

News7/5/00 — Live debut, album completion.Mount Florida have finally come up with a title for their completed album. Titled ‘Arrived Phoenix,’ apparently it is an in-joke. The joke is so “in” that half the band doesn’t get it. Anyhow the next phase of the Mount Florida experience is the live debut on Saturday July 29, supporting Lee “Scratch” Perry at the legendary Glasgow Barrowlands. Mount Florida say start big and slowly work down to fifth on the bill at the “Pig and Pitcher” open band night. The live debut should be interesting, as with four weeks to go Apple have still to make available the software to enable i-Books to run audio. Could end up being Mount Florida “unplugged!”

7/9/99 — Mount Florida are a Glasgow based duo consisting of M.P. Lancaster and Twitch (also known as Mike and Keith, but they can call themselves whatever they want). Twitch is a DJ with all kinds of time served in the club wars at sonora and pure (Edinburgh), and he's also the guy behind the experimental label, pi. M.P. has been involved in a myriad of art / installation projects, most of them pretty undercover compared to his current endeavors.

The collaborative beast that is Mount Florida have recorded some of the coolest stylistic collisions we’ve heard in a long time, equal parts ambient, cut + paste, dub and dance. Fun stuff, but hardly easy listening. Mount Florida’s first release for Matador Europe, a 12" / CD of “Lost in Satie” is coming this autumn.